Many of my non-music business friends ask “If streaming services and webcasters pay so little to songwriters why don’t you pull your songs off the services?”
To further confuse things you probably know by now Thom Yorke pulled his recordings from Spotify. But oddly any “covers” of his songs will remain on Spotify. Why is it that? Why don’t songwriters pull their songs from digital services like Pandora and Spotify if the rates are so bad?
The short answer is: By government mandate we are not allowed.
And here’s the short explanation: There are two similar government mandates that prevent us from doing this. Something called a “consent decree” and another called “compulsory licensing”. Yes believe it or not in 2013 The Government of The United States mandates terms and prices for certain digital uses of songs!
The long explanation: We can sort of opt out but we have to exercise the “Nuclear Option” and pull our digital rights from ASCAP/BMI/SESAC. We would then have to negotiate and collect directly from each and every single digital service on the planet. This is feasible for someone with a lot of catalogue and market power (like Sony ATV) but not for individual songwriters. In other words the only way to “opt out” is to essentially abandon our ability to bargain in a collective manner.
Maybe the solution is to allow songwriters to “opt out” of specific services, or to pick and choose which songs are available on which types of services. This would be a small step towards free markets and aid in “price discovery.” If we have true price discovery for songs we could eliminate the need for governments to set prices and mandate licenses in the first place. I realize this could create new challenges for Songwriters and publisher but can the situation really get any worse?
But heck what do we know? We’d genuinely like to hear what you think.
The Trichordist 
Reblogged this on MUSIC • TECHNOLOGY • POLICY.
Since ASCAP is member owned, it should be a fairly simple process for the membership to vote a resolution to have the board pull music from sites that don’t pay, and then renegotiate a fair rate. Paul Williams should be leading this fight, and since ASCAP already has a great legal team in place, we could move quickly.
I think ASCAP isn’t allowed to fight. my understanding is the consent decree allows the services to play the music while they are negotiating.
I think we should be worrying more about the apparent slave class that songwriters belong to that makes them unable to negotiate their own contracts. We need to get the UN on this so that we can finally free these song writer slaves from being forced into both contracts and work.
Its disgusting and small minded that you only care about whether or not they can do something minor like opt-out of mediums.
How is that disgusting an small minded? It’s a start. You are shooting at the wrong side.
Are you actually kidding me right now?!?! Dude! Anthony! Go back and read what you just wrote, really. You are calling him “disgusting and small minded” why? Only because he is dealing with a particular issue? I really don’t understand! Obviously the author (a songwriter) cares a great deal about songwriters! The article (remember that link that brought you here?) is dealing with opting out of digital music services. It’s a complex issue. It’s needs straightening out. That is what the author is trying to do. He is addressing an issue, which you have the right to form an opinion on. What you don’t have the right to do, is come on to his post and suggest that he is petty for not addressing the issue that happens to be on your mind right now. Shame on you. C’mon man, we have to stick together if we are going to gain any traction here! At least he is trying!! What are you doing?
David, first of all I want to say a hearty THANK YOU for fighting the good fight along with all of us artists. Also, how the hell do you do this? How do you listen to all of these people shooting off at the mouth when they so OBVIOUSLY don’t take the time to read the actual articles before they comment?! I’m dumbfounded. I came here from the link about your big (sarcasm) Pandora payout and… Man, I don’t know what to say. What is wrong? What the hell is going on?
At the risk of being cliche…
It is really quite simple to me. I think that if you create something, and other people want that something, you should have the right to charge them for it.
Oh yeah, I got so heated about some of these comments I almost forgot why I came here in the first place! sigh.
My business partner makes boutique amps as a side business. He had them in all the local guitar stores around Seattle. There is a lot of competition on the sales floor, and not very many capable, knowledgeable salespeople (isolated case, speaking of particular individuals so please don’t *@#*ing blast me about it!) He felt that his product was being poorly represented by said salespeople. He pulled his amps from the retail floor and is now selling them directly. He is doing much better now.
Shouldn’t we have the same rights as artists? I believe we should.
When you create an artistic work, the copyright (by default) remains with the creator. The history of the music business is filled with people who, from the very beginning of recording, understood that having the copyrights assigned to the people doing the recording, were valuable…not only for control of those recordings, but as broadcast revenues started to come into play…it became obvious that the money was in the downstream payouts. Hence, record companies became very interested in acquiring those rights…and many artists of today are in the position of having signed those rights away through publishing deals. Publishing controls the copyright.
The reason I have picked on ASCAP as opposed to BMI, etc. is that it is member-owned. It is my understanding that a vote of the membership can force the legal team to go to court to fight the consent decree. It did not come out of nowhere, and people file lawsuits all the time, get restraining orders, and take cases to a jury. ASCAP controls many copyrights through the publishing companies it collects for. Many of the most egregious exploiters of songwriters are not tied to ASCAP (or anyone else, for that matter), but you have to start somewhere. Paul Williams ought to be leading this charge. He gave a great speech about artists rights not long ago, and it’s obvious that he understands the issues. Now it’s time to cowboy up…there is only strength in unity, and large numbers of artists supporting a move to pull music from Pandora, etc. will result in even more people jumping on the bandwagon.